Environmental Injustices in Central and Eastern Europe

Covering complex topics such as environmental injustice calls for novel reporting approaches. If a topic needs the skills of social scientists, environmental experts and investigative journalists, why not gather those skills in a team? The results might transgress the boundaries of traditional journalism or academia, but they do justice to issues that are otherwise inadequately covered.

Reporting on the environment is often a reminder that nature, although parcelled in land registries, is a complex system that does not recognize ownership and borders. If this idea might seem obvious in the abstract, in practice we often manage the environment as if it were our own backyard. Individuals, states and private companies declare rights and responsibilities over fragments of nature, but the effects of what we do to ‘our’ bit of nature tend to extend beyond the limits defined by ownership.

In a nutshell, what we put in and take out of the earth or water has effects way beyond the river that a company may be polluting or fisherfolk may be fishing.

We see conflict between effects and responsibilities especially in cases of environmental damage, when the causes and effects tend to be transnational but the responsibilities are highly localized. This places the duty on solving complex, multilevel long-standing problems at the door of those who often do not have the resources to tackle them. As such, reporting on environmental injustice becomes a task that needs to combine a bird’s-eye view with fine-grained locally sensitive knowledge.

With such thinking in mind, the ‘Black Waters’ project brought together two teams of social scientists, journalists, and environmental experts from the Center for Media Data and Society at the Central European University, Balkan Insight and Átlátszó. This transnational, multidisciplinary collaborative project sought to experiment in developing new reporting methodologies while investigating two cases of environmental injustice: sturgeon poaching in the Romanian Danube Delta and toxic waste mismanagement in Almásfüzitő, Hungary.

The Romanian Danube Delta investigation explored the poaching of the highly endangered sturgeon and its main driver, the illegal trafficking of caviar. Although banned since 2006, fishing for sturgeon still takes place, often with the participation of the authorities. The investigation into poaching had to take into account the complex power dynamics between the state, with its double role of police force and criminal, the caviar-demanding market, and the knowledge and labour of locals, who are both beneficiaries and victims of criminal activities.

Meanwhile, the investigation in Hungary looked into how toxic waste was being mixed with the red mud tailings of aluminium production, against prevailing environmental protection norms. Red mud reservoirs in Almásfüzitő, a former factory town close to the Slovak border, leak into the Danube, recalling memories of the red mud disaster in the nearby town of Ajka ten years ago. However, it is the toxic waste mixed in the mud that poses the biggest danger. Uncovering why the situation persists demanded an understanding of local cultural and political structures, governance failures, the workings of crony capitalism and the misuse of scientific expertise.

Initially, corruption informed the selection of topics and the angle of both investigations; however, it proved a small and insufficient lens. Although present, corruption failed to properly account for the complexities of history, economic relations and local cultural dilemmas. Moreover, it became a suffocating frame with far too much heavy morality and overly narrow discussions about definitions. Rather than placing corruption front and centre, it lingers in the background of the two sets of stories.

The media outputs that resulted from this collaboration reflect the kaleidoscope of findings in multiple languages.

A longform article on poaching, ‘Decimated Danube’
A multimedia story of a potential ownership change at the toxic waste red mud remediation site, ‘Megújították a Mészáros cégcsoport által kinézett almásfüzitői hulladéklerakó engedélyét’
A podcast series of interviews with fisherfolk on the Danube Delta
How researchers and journalists can work together (forthcoming)
A longform article, ‘Hungary’s Toxic Waste Mismanagement is the Epitome of Orban’s Corrupting State’, (forthcoming)
A multimodal exploration in the Danube Delta (forthcoming)
An audio documentary, ‘Red Alert’, (forthcoming)
Reporting tools for environmental journalism (forthcoming)
Audio interview: toxic waste management in Hungary
The failure of environmental governance in Hungary (forthcoming)
Interview: ‘Cultures of Apathy and Toxicity’ (forthcoming)

As the global pandemic and ongoing climate catastrophe remind us now more than ever, health, whether it is public or environmental, is something we face together. As journalists and researchers, we can contribute to addressing this complex challenge by producing in-depth, nuanced and sensitive reporting.

Ian M. Cook and Dumitrita Holdis are researchers at the Center for Media, Data and Society at the Central European University.

Ian M. Cook

Follow us